Rushing in where fools have failed to nurture their own

Three weeks to the day after the announcement of Steve McClaren's departure the Football Association yesterday settled on his successor. For once it could not be accused of dragging its heels. This time the accusation must be that by seizing the chance to discuss terms with Fabio Capello it is giving the impression of passing up a much more significant opportunity.

Capello is one of the great club coaches and his brusque intelligence may just be what this generation of England players need. If England are going to employ another foreigner, he is as good as they come. But did the FA really need to seize the time quite so urgently?

Here was the opportunity to recognise the failure to reach next summer's Euro 2008 finals as a real blessing, albeit in very heavy disguise. A period without competitive fixtures could have been used for rigorous consideration of the factors that have led the England team to such a pass, in particular the terrible paucity of plausible English candidates for McClaren's job. This is the major fault-line running through the foundations of the English game, and the FA would have done well to acknowledge it by avoiding the temptation to make an instant high-profile appointment, announcing instead its intention to search for a radical solution.

One answer would have been to put Trevor Brooking, its director of football development, in charge for the next six months, while recruiting an English candidate for the full-time post - Steve Coppell, perhaps, or Brooking's own favourite, Alan Curbishley - to work as his part-time assistant, as McClaren worked with Sven-Goran Eriksson. In the summer a permanent appointment could have been made, giving the new man a couple of months to prepare himself and his team for the first World Cup 2010 qualifying matches in September. Meanwhile long-term plans for improving the quality of elite coaching could have been worked out and put in place.

Instead the FA chose to evade the more profound issues by heeding the demands for instant action. Even now some loud voices are critical of Brian Barwick's failure to get on the first plane to Portugal on the morning after the Croatia match and sit outside Jose Mourinho's front door posting bundles of cash through the letter box until the Special One could resist no longer. Having watched that vain hope evaporate, those who want to see England led by a figure of international stature will be mollified by the arrival of Capello.

In solving one problem, however, the FA is repeating the old mistake of covering up another, which is the continuing absence of a decent scheme for educating young English coaches. Yes, they can study to acquire their badges and their Uefa pro licence. But England's recent problems demonstrate that something more far-reaching is required if we are again to see an English manager winning major trophies.

Promises have been made with virtually every change of head coach. When Ron Greenwood took over in 1977, he invited the assistance of Dave Sexton, Terry Venables and Bobby Robson, with Brian Clough and Peter Taylor taking charge of the Under-23 team, albeit briefly. Nineteen years later Glenn Hoddle was supposed to have been surrounded by a cadre of young men undergoing training to slip into his seat. But when his time was brought to a premature end, the plan went along with it. Similarly the arrival of Eriksson was accompanied by pledges of looking to the future, although the £25m spent on his salary produced nothing in terms of long-term planning.

Now the word is that the FA is about to reactivate the Burton-on-Trent scheme, a national centre for the training of young players and coaches. The French, with Clairefontaine, and the Italians, with Coverciano, have long recognised the value of such an elite environment, which may be one of the reasons why the world's best leagues are peppered with French players and coaches and why Italy are the current world champions. But the scheme was mothballed when Wembley's costs started to spiral out of control and the Premier League clubs, keen to keep their young players out of the FA's clutches, managed to block efforts to restart it. The current crisis, however, has reopened a window of opportunity.

If the priority of the Burton centre was clearly stated to be the development of coaches, the clubs could have few complaints. It would even work to their benefit, creating a conveyor belt for the production of men (and women) properly prepared to take over the running of clubs and the national team. The aim would be to ensure that the future equivalents of Hoddle, Peter Reid, Terry Butcher, Ray Wilkins, Phil Thompson and Sammy Lee - all currently between jobs - do not find themselves consigned to limbo by a continued influx of foreign coaches with superior expertise.

Capello will not care about any of this, and why should he? He is being invited to produce short-term results and in financial terms he has already hit the jackpot, regardless of the outcome. But it is hard to avoid the uneasy feeling that his appointment is another smoke-and-mirrors job, concealing a continued absence of the sort of planning which would ensure that England are not condemned to an endless repetition of the same desperate pattern.